A blog about games (reviews and analysis), music, and stories that range from serious to incredibly silly.

Friday, September 14, 2012

The Captain's Log of Captain Frederick Stevenson, of Space, Part 1

Let's do something a little different this time. I have FTL - Faster Than Light. I'd like to review it, but I need to play it more first. So come along on this first impressions/Let's Play as Captain Frederick Stevenson braves the treachery of space. I've played it less than an hour previously, so enough time to know how it works without having a lot of surprise spoiled for this.

Captain's Log: Spacedate 1,352

So, um, funny thing. Remember how I said being stuck in one place all the time was boring? And that I wanted to get out and see the galaxy? Well the base got attacked by rebels. Yeah, it sucks. So we all split up and I ended up on this ship:

Yeah, that's me apparently appointed as captain. Of a three person crew. And even worse, this ship just so happens to be loaded with sensitive Federation data we need to keep away from the Rebels. So now we're on the run. Yay!

At least the ship seems to be running okay.

Captain's Log: Spacedate 1,355

I thought it'd be a good idea to insert a star map for reference, so here we go:

For the last couple of days things have been pretty peaceful, thankfully. We even were able to harvest some resources from debris orbiting a gas giant. Maybe this won't be so bad after all. Fingers crossed!

Captain's Log: Spacedate 1,356

As we were sailing along, we came across a civilian distress signal. Davis and Wilkinson told me to ignore it, but I told them that that's not how my mum raised me!

So yeah, turns out the civilian ship was being chased by a pirate. When it noticed us, it attacked us! Thankfully, I remembered the lessons from my internet course on the Art of Captaineering, and I sent Davis to charge the shields and Wilkinson to man, er, woman the guns while I continued piloting.

Then they destroyed life support. Which is... bad. Life support's pretty important for living, so I had Wilkinson head over and try to put out the fire and hopefully do whatever's necessary to fix it. Whacking it with a wrench or something, I don't really know.

Oh, and did I mention that they have a laser beam? Yeah, it totally cut through my shields and started fires all over the place.

Still, we eventually took the pirates out and got some nice supplies from the wreckage. And even better, one of the guys from the civilian ship offered to join our crew! His name is Ohm, which seems like a kind of stupid name for a person, but he's a Zoltan so whatever.

Oh, and I also made some upgrades to the ship with some of the scrap metal we collected.

Captain's Log: Spacedate 1,357

Today we met some slavers. Ohm urged me to attack them, but they looked mean so I just kind of ignored them and we went on our way.

Oh, and I almost forgot to fix the life support system. That was pretty awkward...

Captain's Log: Spacedate 1,358

I'm a little annoyed right now. Right after upgrading the ship we came across a merchant and now we have no scrap left to buy things with! I did use the last of our scrap to repair the hull, but still. Grr.

Also, I took a look at the star map today. The Rebels are advancing, but we're still pretty far ahead.

Captain's Log: Spacedate 1,360

Right when we were about leave this Sector, we got a distress signal. More civilians being attacked by pirates. Sheesh. The pirates offered us a bribe to ignore them, but I felt bad about that and attacked them.

Turns out they have a drone and stuff. I hope this isn't my last log... I knew I never should have become a Captain. I should've kept working at the food court! Why did I take that correspondence course?

Captain's Log: Spacedate 1,360, but slightly later

Hah! We destroyed the pirates' drone controller thingy and now they're trying to escape. We'll take out their engines and show 'em who's boss!

Captain's Log: Spacedate 1,363

We took out the pirates pretty easily, actually. Got a decent collection of scrap from it, too. And now we can finally exit the sector and move on. I decided to head to an Engi-controlled area. Better than dealing with the Mantis.

FTL is sort of a rogue-like, which means there's permadeath. As such, I'll continue this series until I die. It's an unforgiving and somewhat random game, so it may be soon. At the end I'll provide a kind of mini-review/summary of my thoughts on the game.

3 comments:

I love these sorts of humorous videogame journals. Fun read, and I hope you do more of them.

I didn't know much about FTL until I read the GOG description of it, but it sounds like just the sort of space flight game I would love to play. This just makes me want to play it more. Sadly, I'm busy with Amnesia, Fallout New Vegas, and a new playthrough of Call of Pripyat. Too many games, grr...

Thanks. I was planning on doing an update over the weekend, but got distracted. I've actually already completed the playthrough and taken a bunch of screenshots, so now I just need to go through and apply writing to it.

And yeah, it's definitely a really fun game. Only trouble is that sometimes it can feel a little too random. They could stand to cut down on some of the events that screw you over no matter what (or add some way of avoiding them).

Btw, if you do get it I'd suggest getting it from the Developer's site unless the GOG goodies are very important to you. The copy from the developer is the same price, but comes with a DRM-free version, a Steam key, and Mac and Linux copies (which isn't relevant for me, but is still nice).